座頭

The zagashira is the highest-ranking actor performing at a theatre. Popularity alone did not suffice: the position demanded the artistic authority to lead an entire company.

In the Edo period the zagashira is said to have held sweeping authority, engaged not only in staging but in the management of the playhouse itself; actors contracted with a theatre year by year, and the zagashira was the keystone of the company. Today the word may also honour an actor capable of the great roles the zagashira historically played—Benkei in Kanjinchō above all.

The reading holds a small trap: the same characters read zatō form an entirely different word, one rank among blind professionals in the Edo period—the tōdōza guild of biwa players and masseurs is said to have graded its members kengyō, bettō, kōtō, and zatō. The head of a kabuki troupe is always zagashira.

Zagashira names an institution of kabuki as a whole. That Benkei in Kanjinchō—the very archetype of a zagashira's role—belongs to the Kabuki Jūhachiban of the Ichikawa Sōke speaks to the weight the name Danjūrō has carried in Edo kabuki.